Like Fairygodboss, where we track which employers are improving their paid leave policies, the BCG team has taken note of this trend. To get a better sense of why companies are moving in this direction, BCG analyzed the policies of more than 250 mid- and large-size companies and spoke to 25 HR leaders at large organizations.

What did they conclude? Employers find that there’s a strong business case for providing paid family leave for a variety of reasons, including improved talent retention and attraction.

The goal of BCG’s report is to make this information more accessible to companies that are considering updating their policies. When the team did case work on paid family leave, oftentimes companies reported that when they looked into restructuring their paid family leave policies, they spent a lot of time just trying to figure out what was going on in the market.

“We wanted to provide a synthesized view of the current state as well as share the learnings we gained from talking to a diverse set of companies about their experience designing and implementing paid leave policies,” says BCG partner Trish Stroman, who co-authored the report (along with Gabrielle Fitzgerald, Wendy Woods, Shalini Unnikrishnan, and Liz Bird).